Ring adds new security settings you should check right now. After the podcast, Google Photos has a major oops, plus some Apple Watch tips and tricks. What's going on? This is the Rich on Tech podcast where I talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about. It's also the place where I answer the questions that you send me. My name is rich Dimiro, the tech reporter at KATLA Channel five in Los Angeles. Joining me is producer Megan, who just finished watching the Taylor Swift documentary.
What's up? Megan?
Just this morning? Not much? Did you watch it?
I watched twenty minutes of it, so I will try to. We've been trying to finish it. Yeah, but I liked it for the twenty minutes that we watched. So I'm still trying to get through the Morning Show season one. It takes me a while to get through things. So it usually takes me two nights, two to three nights for a movie, yeah, TV series maybe a year and then five years. Yeah, it's a while. Book maybe books are actually pretty quick, Yeah, usually like a month, because
I that's that's my priority. I read and I love reading, especially now with Libby, the app that gives me the free books. So I think we talked about that on the podcast, right Libby, we did right?
Yeah, last week? I think we did.
Yeah, did we? I think we did well. Anyway, if you don't have it, download the app Libby so you can get free books for your kindle. Have you charged your kindle since we talked about that, because I know you let it go totally dead for like a couple of years.
You know, I actually bought a kindle because of Libby. I didn't have a kindle before. Oh, you gave me an old kindle. I gave it to my dad, and then I bought myself a new Kindle when you told me about Libby, because I was like, I don't want to spend money on books anymore.
Why not just yeah, free the local library. So yeah, I've been loving it.
So you've got you've gotten one delivered to the iPad or the I have like eight books on the kindle, pretty easy, and it's it's pretty amazing, and I, you know, I go back and forth about the whole you know, reading on this on the tablet versus reading on the printed page. For a while, I was going all books, but I realized buying the latest best sellers are very expensive, and I love supporting artists and this and that I wrote a book, and I love that people you know,
paid me to you know, get my book. But I also offered it for free a lot of different ways. So I think there's something for everyone.
Well, I like.
The idea of maybe trying starting it on on Libby, on your kindle, like getting a book there, and then let's say you're like so into it and you're like, I love this book, I want to have it.
Then you can buy it.
And nobody's doing that, but I would maybe I would test. It's test books, testing books. That's interesting. But maybe if you love an author, it all depends too. Maybe you're going on vacation, you want that physical books that you can read it by the pool, whatever it may be. Anyway, well I'm glad you're reading again. Let's get to the big story of the week. Ring has a whole bunch of new controls inside their app. They are calling it the Control Center, and if you have a Ring device,
you should take a look at this immediately. Because Ring's been in the news for a lot of stuff, a lot of it has been kind of overblown, but at the same time, this is a device that is on a lot of homes, and this is a company that needs to step up when it comes to letting the
average person make sure that their stuff is secured. So, no matter what, we had that whole big thing where the people were hacking into the rings or we call it hacking, but realistically people are using very weak passwords, they weren't protecting their device very much and other people were able to get into those. Now they're saying that they have this new control center and help you kind of see all this stuff in one place, and here's
the things that you need to look at. Number one, you can look and see if you have two factor authentication enabled for your Ring account, which you should. Ring is outside your front door. You might have one inside your house. It's a look into your personal so you want to have this secured in a big way. Two factor authentication is kind of the best thing we have right now. So the control center will tell you if
that's enabled, if it's not, turn it on. Second thing, you can see all of the devices and the third party services that are authorized to see your Ring account. Let me give you an example. Let's say you had an old Android phone and you upgrade it to an iPhone last year. That old Android phone might still be logged into your account on Ring and even if you have it in a drawer somewhere. Probably not the biggest, biggest deal, but it's still an open kind of pathway
into your account that you want to close. So you can go through and actually remove all the devices that are on your account. And for me, that was about eight pages of devices from over the years. I've had a RING for five years now, so you have like forty it was. Yeah, it test phones all the time, so I'm always logging in. Yeah, and of course Ring I want to see what's going on, so I removed all the old phone. The only thing I don't like about this is you can't remove them one by one.
You have to remove them all, which is fine, you just start fresh, and then once you start fresh, you have to log in on your main phones again. Okay. It's also good. If you ever gave someone access to your account and you kind of forgot about that, they can still be looking in, so good get rid of them. Yeah. The way they want you to share access to your account is with a process called shared Users. So, Megan,
let's say I was going on vacation. I said, hey, can you take a look at you know, just keep a watch on my house, and I gave you access to my account. Normally, I would log in on the app on your phone and be like, okay, cool, Well, now you can do something called shared users. You could always do this for a while, but that's the way you want to do it. Got so that way it's more controlled and I can take away your privileges from my end without going onto your phone and logging in, right, okay.
Now the big one is something called video request notifications.
This is something you may or may not understand or even be aware of when it comes to RING, but they work with law enforcement in very arious places across the US so that law enforcement can say, hey, you know what, we had a robbery on Main Street, and do you mind pinging all those cameras around Main Street and asking them if they would give us their video so we can take a look and see if we get a photo of the person, the perpetrator, or the
car or the license plate. And so RING will ping people on Main Street and say hey, would you mind sharing your video with the police, and they would go and they would grab your video off the account from a certain period of time. Let's say it was from one am to two am.
If you let them.
If you let them, you would give them that permission. Well, in the past you had to just kind of wait for the police to ask you for this. Now you can say, you know what, I don't even want the police to I'm not even in the running for this. Just take me out of the running. Just imagine I don't have a ring video doorbell. Don't even tell the police I do. So that way you can turn this off. This is called video request notifications. You can opt out of that now, so you can disable that.
And that's because it's like, I don't want to.
Do what's that? Yeah, you just don't. Maybe you don't trust the police, Maybe you don't trust the society, you're an anarchist, you don't like the government. Whatever it is, I don't know, but there's reasons. But they're giving you that ability. I personally left it on if something happened outside my house and I can help with something, fine. Now here's when it comes to be a problem. It's I mean, it's just this weird thing where you're willing to help unless it's something related to you.
Perhaps so let's say your neighbor's house, yeah.
Or anything, and all of a sudden they're like, hey, can we get and you're like, oh wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
I can't show you what happened between one am.
Yeah, I'm not showing you that, okay. So it's interesting. It's one of these things where it's good to have the ability to turn it on or off. I would hope that people would leave it on because it's probably in the greater good. But there's also this idea of are we building a surveillance society? Right?
Unknowingly, it reminds me of the surveillance camera and cars everywhere.
They're everywhere now, well.
The company we did like two companies last year that do that.
You have you have a camera in your car.
I have a a dash cam.
Right and you're talking about something with you know, if you get to.
An accident, yeh, can that video be subpoena?
I mean, it's it's crazy.
The idea that we have so many cameras everywhere is just becoming more of reality. Like, we have to figure out how to deal with all this. There's no easy there's no easy solution. Regan By the way, if you want to look at your ring stuff on my website, rich on Tech dot TV. I do have a blog post where I kind of laid out all those things I just talked about and explain how to change those features and you know, do whatever you need to do to make them work for you.
Cool. I'm going to check it out. Okay.
So this first question comes from Joe, and Joe wrote on Rich's Facebook, which is Facebook dot dot com slash rich on Tech. Joe writes, I wanted to get your opinion on a new internet provider called Story. Are you familiar with this? We just got it installed today and so far it's going great.
I have heard of Story, and this is a wireless internet provider, kind of an alternative to the typical internet providers, which are your cable company and your phone company. But we are seeing more of these wireless providers come along, which is a good thing for customers or consumers. I guess I should say. This is fifty dollars a month
for two hundred megabits of service. And what they're doing is they have kind of a on one big building they have like an antenna and then they'll have a small antenna that they put in your house, like this little wireless box, a router kind of thing, router slash modem, and that receives a signal from the big antenna that they put up. So the main downside of this is
really where it's available. Okay, So if it's available in your area, then by all means check it out, and you should go to Starre dot com and see pop in your address and see if it's available. This can help you bypass the cable companies because it's go to be a little bit cheaper. Now. I wish it was a lot cheaper. For example, I pay seventy dollars a month for Spectrum, which is two hundred megabits per second, and that's seventy dollars. This is fifty for maybe about
the same speed. So it would be nice if it was way cheaper, like thirty twenty dollars a month. It's kind of a lot. It's not that much to have you switch because it's a pain to switch.
Yeah, so if I was.
Saving forty a month or fifty a month, sure, but twenty a month is kind of like I'll get to that. But I do think this is cool and it's available according to their website in La San Francisco, Boston, New York City, and Denver. So go to Star dot com. See the other one that's available in LA is called wander Wa n Oh gosh, is it w I think it's w A N d R. I think they leave out the e, W A and d R. Let me see, hold on, let me get it. It is called wander Wa n d ER. So if you're in LA, check
out wander really Santa Monica. That's kind of where they're available. Oh well, that's their website. Wow, okay, I don't like websites. I have AutoPlay wander dot net. So if you want to check it out now, they are twenty five dollars a month.
Oh wow, how many.
That I think is fifty down, But fifty is enough for most people. Okay, So, but for twenty five dollars a month, that sounds a lot cheaper than seventy to me. I'd be like, yeah, I'm checking this.
Yeah.
So anyway, those are your two alternatives. We're seeing T Mobile. They have T Mobile ISP, which you can check and see if they're available in your area. They're fifty. Verizon has five G home Internet, which again all these things are available in very small areas because they have to put an antenna up in your area with this big service, and then it services just a small area around an antenna, right,
So that's why it's not everywhere all at once. Let's talk about kind of the the biggest fear when you put your stuff in the cloud. What would that be. Let's say you back up all your pictures to the cloud. What's your biggest fear with that?
It getting hacked?
Yeah, someone else seeing the pictures, so get like just deleted, deleted or hacked. Yeah, or basically someone else getting access to these pictures is also kind of up there. Well, Google Takeout had a little bit of a problem with Google Photos. Now I love Google Photos, you know, I'm a big fan, So to me, this really hurts my heart when I see that this happened with Google Photos.
But some people that try to download their pictures from Google Photos apparently got some other people's photos mixed in with theirs. Not just photos, it's actually videos.
Oh that's so weird.
Yeah. This happened between November twenty first and twenty fifth. It was for people that were using Google Takeout, And if you're not familiar with Google Takeout. Google has this system where you can download the data that Google has that you you upload with them. So if you've used a service, basically any of their services, you can go to this Google Takeout website and say, hey, I want an archive all my pictures that I've uploaded in all my videos, and they will zip that up into an
archive and then let you download it. Now, actually downloading that is one hundred percent a royal pain because imagine I've got a terabyte of photos in my Google Photos or whatever. I have, maybe not that much, but the reality is to download a file that big, and even though they break up the files so that they're easier to download, it's gonna take me a week or two to download. Yeah, So realistically, I've never done this because
it's too much. We need a better system and Google, I will say, Google Drive lets you sync to other devices like a Synology backup or something like eb meeb dot com is the website for that device that lets you back up your Google Drive. Google Photos, as far as I know right now, has no way of letting you incrementally back them up to another device. So, like we talked about ebe, remember when that thing first came out,
it's a Wi Fi connected hard drive. When that first came out, you were able to think your Google Photos to that ebe. Now you can't do that anymore. Google Photos kind of cut off everyone all third parties. So now when you do Google Photos, everything is in Google Photos and that's it. You can't say, hey, I want this hard drive to kind of sink all these photos every night all twenty four to seven so that I always have a copy of to me.
Yeah, probably coming out with their own version of easy.
Something there exactly. That leads me to believe that they EI are going to do like a marketing thing where they're going to say, hey, Western Digital or whoever, you're going to have exclusive rights to letting people sink their photos to your hard drive. Because think about it, that's a pretty lucrative business. Yeah, all the people are using Google Photos, say oh, I want that hard drive so I can easily have a backup totally say somebody has
to do this. Google has to do this soon, Yeah, because you don't want to not have your I mean, Google's not going away anytime soon, but it just it worries me that my pictures are in a place I can't easily download.
I get questions all the time from my family members.
About where to put their photos, and it's I just feel like it's becoming an issue. Yeah, all my pictures are on my computer. My computer is super slow. Now, Like, yep, that just shouldn't happen. You shouldn't have to put everything on your desktop computer.
No, and or if you Yeah, I mean, it's just people don't really do that anymore. It's all in the cloud. Yeah, I mean, so you have Google. You know, You've got Google Photos, You've got Microsoft OneDrive, You've got Amazon Photos, You've got iCloud. It is very confusing. This entire picture thing has caused most people to just declare photo bankruptcy,
where I don't even want to deal with it. I'll just and they're forced to deal with it when they have to, which is when they get a new phone, when they get a new computer, when something happens or something goes wrong. Yeah, and for me, this even happened to myself. I was looking for a picture of my kid in the hospital when he was born, and I couldn't find it. I went to the date of his birth and nothing was in there in Google Photos. I'm like, whoa,
what I had messed up? I had not backed up a backup that I thought I backed up, and then I had to back up and do it all over again. Yeah. It was really freaked me out. I was like, how am I going to explain this to my wife?
Oh no?
Yeah? So long story short. With the Google Photos stuff, it probably didn't affect you, And if it did, you got an email from Google and they are telling you if you did a takeout export between November twenty first and November twenty fifth, you should delete it and ask for a new.
One because one terabyte.
You may have other people's stuff in there.
So did you get your pictures? Oh?
Pp, other people's photos?
Did you get your picture?
I did find them? Yeah, okay, good, But now I'm worried because I have a lot of random background.
Do you print any pictures? By the way?
Sometimes? Okay, sometimes, but very rarely.
Yeah.
But I love Google Photos because now if you need to print a picture, you can just search in Google Photos for whatever you need. Like I'm doing like a sunset collage and I can just type in sunsets.
And you know, no, it's such a cool feature for sure.
This next question comes from Thomas, and if you want to submit your question, just go to riches site rich on tech dot tv and hit the contact button to send your question. So Thomas writes, I heard your segment on KFI with Handle. What is the difference between Libby and Overdrive? I have Overdrive on my kindle now and your explanation of Libby seems to be the same as Overdrive.
Well, in fact, good question. So, by the way, if you're in the LA area, I'm on KFI AM six forty Tuesday mornings at eight am with Bill Handle, Wednesday mornings at five point twenty with Jennifer Jones Lee. So what is the difference between overdrive and Libby? Well, Libby is actually owned by Overdrive. And these are the apps we're talking about at the beginning of the show that lets you get free books, and it's not just fair Kindle.
By the way, these let you download. You can read them inside the app, you can read them on your iPad, you can read them on your computer. Anywhere where you can download or access Overdrive or Libby, you have access to these apps or these books. So the Overdrive app the original one, and you probably have heard of it. In fact, a lot of libraries work with Overdrive to
put their digital collections on Overdrive. It's kind of like every library in America doesn't want to create their own digital library, so they just say, you know what, we're gonna let Overdrive handle the heavy lifting, and yes, we have the collections, but you handle all the rights management, loading them out, making sure they're collected. Because even though it's a library book through Overdrive, it's still dealt with
the same way as a physical book. You have to wait for a copy of it, you get it out for a certain amount of time, and you have to give it back at the end of that time. So Overdrive is just a more thorough version. I think it's the original one, and it just has everything all in there, so it even has video. Apparently. Libby is just for books and just for audiobooks, and it's way simpler and it helps you sign up for the library card. I
haven't used the Overdrive app. I've only used Libby, but from what I can see, it seems like they took everything they learned about Overdrive the ten years or so that it's been available and just kind of distilled it down into Libby, which is just simpler, cooler, hip or fresher, better interface, and just easier to use.
How did you come across Libby?
I saw an article about it, and I was like, this is interesting, because whenever I see an article about something that seems really cool that I've never heard of, I'm like, I gotta investigate this.
Yeah.
So I saw this Libby thing. I'm like, and I knew you could always get I knew, I always knew you can get books from your library in digital format, but it was to me, it just seemed like it was too tough and too complicated, so I never bothered. But then when I saw that, I saw the words Libby and Kindle and I was like, wait a second, that's interesting. I never thought about that free and free, and that's when I looked it up. And it's like
after that game over. I've told everyone I know about it, and I've talked to a lot of people that read a lot and they knew about it, and so it's something that's not a secret, but it's really cool.
Yeah, super cool.
February is Heart month, and if you have your eye on an Apple Watch, you might want to upgrade because they are. Apple is giving a little bit of extra cash for the series two and three, which are perfectly fine. But if you want the new features of the Apple Watch five, this might be the time to do it. Because you're getting one hundred dollars for your old watch versus you know, versus seventy or sixty. Wow, so you're getting thirty or forty extra dollars, which when you think
about one hundred, that's that's a big percentage extra. So what do you get with the Apple Watch Series five over the two or three? Will you get the compass, get a larger display, you get a faster processor, you get the always on display, which I don't necessarily think you need, but you get the heart readings as well. So if you're thinking about a new Apple Watch, do the trade in now. I will tell you. And I don't think this would happen with your Apple Watch. But
with me. You've probably heard me complain on this podcast about my computer that I sent in for trade in. I bought my new computer. They said they're going to give me six hundred and forty dollars for my old one. Send it away email two weeks later saying oh, we're not giving you six forty, we're giving you two thirty and I said, wait, wait what they said it was bent? So I was like, okay, send it back. So they sent it back to me. I got it yesterday. I finally opened it up and I looked at it. I
was like, where's this bent? Because my computer was perfect. I was so proud of how perfect. I kept this computer for three years or two years, whatever I had it for, and I finally saw a little tiny where I dropped it on my desk, actually only a couple of weeks ago before I returned it. Yeah, and the side corner was just a little bit bent. In long
story short, the computer's fine. So now it's for my kids, I'm not so I guess my word to the whys is just beware that when you get the new Apple Watch and you send your old one in for one hundred, they could still come back at you and say, now we're only giving you fifty because there's a scratch on the screen or whatever. They still reserved that right. Speaking of the Apple Watch, there are several tips and tricks that I shared on my Instagram, so I'll share some
of them here. So a couple things. Number One, you want to squeeze some more battery life out of your watch, you can use something called power reserve, So you can swipe up from the bottom, tap the battery percentage, and then slide the power reserve switch and it turns off everything except just the time. So if you're on a long plane flight you just want your watch to last. Maybe you're on an overnight flight to Tokyo. You want your watch to last when you land and you're gonna
be hitting the ground running in the morning. Put on the power reserve. It won't go dead on the flight next. Oh, if you want to get out of there, you have to press and hold the side button until the Apple logo appears. Maybe an app is misbehaving. Did you know that you can kind of swipe out an app, just like you can on your iPhone. So press the side button, find the offending app, and then swipe the app to the left. That will reveal a red X. Tap it in their cos This is a really cool one that
I'm not sure a lot of people know. Most of the time, when you look at your apps on the Apple Watch, they're arranged in this sort of bubble grid I call it. It's like really weird. I don't even know why they chose that, but it's like they're floating around. It's really weird. Well, I personally like a grid or
a list view. So if you go to your bubble grid and just kind of press hard on the screen, it will say, oh, do you want to change the list view, and then you can change them to list view and now you can scroll through your apps alphabetically. And finally, the other one I like, and this is
my favorite. You know that you can find your your iPhone if you swipe up from the bottom of your Apple Watch screen and press the little ping button which looks like an iPhone with some waves rating out radiating out of it. Well, if you press and hold your finger on that little button, your phone will flash and ring. So if you're in a dark room, you can actually see where your phone is. Oh cool, just kind of fun.
All of those tips and tricks are on my Instagram at rich on Tech or my Facebook page Facebook dot com slash.
Okay, Well, then one more Apple question, Apple Watch.
What is this the Apple podcast? What we the Apple bits excel?
Well, this is an Apple Watch question, so I thought might as well, Okay, follow your I'm just kidding, I'm just nice. This next question comes from Greg rich when you recommend a good Apple Watch case that doesn't get all fogged up, the one.
We have is useless Apple Watch case. I've seen people with cases on their Apple Watch and I never understood it. And I get it. It's a small little device. You think you're gonna be working out, You're gonna be doing things, you know, outdoors. You're gonna scratch it, You're gonna hit up against the wall. But I've been wearing an Apple Watch for a long time and I've never had a problem with it at all. I've never scratched it. I did drop it on the floor once, on my tile
floor in the bathroom. Is it marble, no, just kidding? Or is it gold or was that the gold plated floor? And it did dent the side of it, but it was like the back that was over here on the side. Yeah. So I think that is the time when you do have to worry about it is when your screen hits a hard ground like that, like from a higher elevation, like if you put on the countertop and it falls onto your kitchen floor, that's probably gonna mess up the
screen pretty well. Otherwise, I don't really think you need a case with your Apple Watch. I feel like it takes away from the beauty of it, and it's a device that is meant to be used. It's waterproof, it's fine. It's gonna be okay in the water for most of the generations, except I believe the first one. So you're okay. Now, if you really want one, I'd probably go with a company like otter Box, or you can go with Spegan. Those are two companies that make a lot of cases. I've never tested one.
I don't even know what that would look like.
It's just it's big and gummy and rubbery. That's what it looks like. It looks like kind of a big gummy rubbery thing on your watch. Like it's kind of a lot.
Yeah, especially if you know an Apple Watch can last like six months in the ocean.
Yeah, we did a story with that. The guy's Apple Watch washed up six months later after he lost it in the ocean, and it was fine. But that said, I'll give you some of the brands. Catalyst is another one. Catalyst makes a lot of waterproof cases. Otter Box, Pelican, they might make a case for the Apple Watch. And what's the other one. I really like spec but I don't think they make one for the Apple Watch. Let's see, maybe they do. Oh, sure enough, they.
Do, they do.
So I would look at those those places and speaking if you want something that's kind of cheap. But yes, Spec Spec makes a candy shell fit, but it's kind of like it makes your watch a little I don't know. Okay, but it's twenty bucks. If you feel more comfortable having that on there, go ahead. Maybe your personal trainer. I've seen a lot of a lot of the trainers at my gym when I do one on one personal training every day. Yeah yeah, twice a day.
When I'm there once a month.
Yeah, so uh, I'm totally kidding, by the way about doing it.
But not the mars every other day.
But these trainers, they do have little kind of these rubber wrappers on their watch because they are bouncing around weights and all this stuff. So I could see how that could be a problem.
Yeah, I wonder what that's like.
But for me, when I'm just on the peloton, I don't really have that issue. Yeah again, joking, all these things are.
Jet Rich does not have a peloton.
I don't have a peloton.
He is a personal training.
I have that thing where like someone does the workout for you? Is that a thing? What? No, what's that thing where you just like put it on your abs and it's just.
Like it, like, yeah, I need one of those.
Do you imagine that? I do believe in the future, though, they will figure out, we're getting so smart about all this stuff, they will figure out a way to like work you out without you having to do much like you get wherever, yeah, where everyone's just totally lounging around watching TV. If I if I had a nickel for every Wally reference I got. In my line of work, it comes up almost every day everyone I'm interviewing, It's like, oh, it's just Wally. It's all the time.
I feel like the opposite is kind of happening though, because I feel like people are becoming more active interesting.
I think that maybe it's just I think maybe you are. Why are you so appy? Not?
I just feel like people are more aware of health.
I do.
I feel like Wally like obviously people like are not healthy in that, which is odd.
So it's like the opposite's happening.
It's like people are more aware, especially with like the Apple Watch, all the health stats you can get just from like looking at your phone totally great.
So I was at the gym. Seriously, I was at the gym, not yesterday, but the day before, and it was like one of those days you were just tired, you don't really feel like going. But I wanted to get my minutes on my watch, so I just did the quickest, shortest. It was like a twenty seven minute workout from Active and I knew i'd get my minutes because I already had like two, or i'd pick up the rest throughout the day and sure enough, you know,
you do your workout, you feel better. But I did it just for the ring to be closed on my Apple Watch. And then I saw this trainer that I know there and she's like, oh, so, like I saw you doing that cardio today and I'm like, yep, gotta get those minutes. And she's like, hey, that's you know, nothing wrong with that.
Yeah, that's awesome, good for you.
So I bought a package of fifteen personal training sessions. All right, let's talk about Google Maps. Now, let's talk about Google Maps. They turn fifteen. Wow this week, How crazy is that? Fifteen? Megan, you were just a you were a tiny t what's the equivalent of a lasts a last. You were just a tiny lass when Google Maps came.
Out and Scottish references.
It's so weird to think that before Google Maps we had ways of getting around which we're asking people for directions, printing out map quest directions, Thomas guide.
Using your compass?
Did she?
Is that just me?
I don't think people use compasses. Maybe you did, Sunstone. I don't know whatever you did. But the reality is Google Maps changed everything, and now I don't know about you. Has someone ever tried to give you directions lately?
Yeah?
And what do you say? And what do you say to them?
I just go I can't. This is too much information, you say, I have my phone. I'm like, no, no, no, don't tell me. I don't want to know.
I'll be fine. Yeah, I will just follow the blue line on my phone to my death.
I'm so happy though, and I can like figure it out, like figure out how to get home from someplace.
It's like, oh, I just I'll take this freeway. I know what I'm doing.
I put my Google Maps on. Whether I'm driving to work every single morning just to get to work. Yes, Now here's why though, because it's the traffic. Yes, it is it is. Yes, it has saved me twice where it said All of a sudden, I put it on and I see it's routing me some weird way, and I'm like groggy, and I'm like, oh, give me a break. I follow it, and sure enough, there's a huge accident on the freeway. It routes me around it, and I
am like, wow, that was a lifesaver. And that happened at least twice in recent memory.
Oh wow.
I also put it every day when I bring my kids or when I pick up my kids from school. You just never know. We live in Los Angeles. You never know there could be something on the streets. And what I like to do is I also like to be a contributor to the data that these maps apps are kind of sucking up from all the phones. So I feel like, yeah, I feel like I'm doing my part and like giving them that data from my phone of what it looks like on the roads.
That's great, good for you.
So Google Maps turning fifteen, you will notice there's a brand new icon for the app, and there's some they say there's new features. Well, the app is actually getting more complicated. I feel like Google Maps has just gotten kind of bloated. I think what they're trying to do is, since Google Maps is so popular actually on the iPhone, like Google needs a way of being a trojan horse on your phone an Android, they have free access to everything. But what if people use the most on their phone,
probably Google Maps on the iPhone. So they're thinking, well, how many features can we build in to Google Maps that kind of still give us data, that kind of still give people access to Google products. So here's all the things you get now. Five tabs across the bottom. Explore which helps you find things nearby, Commute which tells you about your route, saved which is a list of all your places which I have on Yelp, Contribute which lets you share your local knowledge. I'm a big fan
of sharing pictures on Google Maps. I love doing that. I've got like eight million views of my pictures. Whoa updates which is a feed of trending spots nearby. So it's all those things that are now baked into the Google Maps app. But for ninety nine percent of people, what are they using Google Maps for? I need directions from A to B. That's it. Yeah, Like, when was the last time you found a restaurant to go to on Google Maps. Never never, I mean me either, No, I mean I always go to yelp.
But is there a way?
I know, if you're on your desk and you're searching on Google Maps, you can like change the time, Like if you're leaving, yes, two days at this time and you want to get there by two pm?
Can you do that on the app?
You can? I actually wrote this down because oh wow, you're predicting. I'm actually going to do a little video of some Google Maps tips. So I wrote it down already. So you're talking about the one that tells you. On the desktop, it's super easy. You just say like, oh, I want to leave at nine am, and you just change a little slider. On mobile, it's not as a parent. But if you're on iOS, you have to go to
the upper right hand corner after you get directions. So get directions, okay, Then go to the upper right hand corner. There's a little three buttons that's the menu button, and you have to choose set a reminder to leave. I know, it's weird they hide it beneath that.
Okay.
So even though it says set a reminder to leave, you can still talk. You can still scroll through and get an idea of the time. So let's say you scroll through and you say, I want to be there at six pm on Friday night. You set all that with the dials, and then it'll say you need to leave by five point fifteen and it will tell you that, and then you can set a reminder and your phone will send you notification, or you can just look at that information be like, all right, I got a budget
about forty five minutes. On Android, once you choose directions, you hit the menu button and it says choose set depart or arrive time. And once you do that, you can choose when you want to leave or arrive. They don't have a notification for you on Android built into the maps app. I know. It's weird. I think because they use it through your calendar, they kind of see where you're going and give you notifications. Sometimes it's very hit or miss, okay, but that's how you see it
on Android. It'll give you a range of time that'll take to get there, so it is there on the app. I just don't understand why they don't make it more prominent, and I think they should. And the only reason I have that written down. Is because I literally, you know, I like to do these little videos for Instagram, these sixty second tech tips, and I just was like, oh, maps would be kind of a fun one. Yeah, because there's a lot more than meets the eye.
Okay, This next next question comes from Patty. I downloaded a song from iTunes and I would like to use it for a ring tone on my iPhone eight plus.
How do I go about it? I used to try to do this all the time when I was younger.
Remember when ringes were like such a big thing.
Yeah, you would buy them for like two dollars, And I remember trying to, like I bought a song on iTunes and then put it on garage band and tried to make it like twenty eight seconds all that.
It's complicated, but it.
Is complicated more. But a lot of people don't know. For a while, they were selling ring tones in the iTunes store. I don't even know if they sell them anymore, but I bought a few recently. I wonder if I can look back, I might have bought the Nickelback you know, like a Nickelback song. Yeah, okay, back in the day.
Oh, Jason al Dean No that would be now, oh okay.
Well you know your country music. Huh yeah, Now it would be Brett Young.
I was gonna say Brett Eldridge, isn't he.
Brett, Yeah he is.
I just make a name.
I think Brett Eldridge is. Oh, what the heck was that Brett Eldridge? He sings Dan No, I don't know. Okay, yeah, that sounds like all the want to be that song lose my mind anyway. So I believe in some way you can probably get ring tones, maybe from iTunes. Still, but there's two ways that I would recommend to do this. If you want to do it the free, simple easy way, it's not really simple, I guess I should call it the freeway is to download garage band on your iPhone. Yeah,
but it's very common. It's not easy to do like the average person without following some sort of some sort of tutorial online. It's not like it says, hey, make a ringtone, which they should have as an option.
Especially by now.
Yeah, just like it's basically a little you're basically it's like a little commercial for that song.
If it plays, you know, exactly.
So I would recommend if you want to do what's the person's same that emailed uh, Patty, Patty, I would recommend if you want to do it for free, download garage Band to your iPhone. It's a free app. Get the song that you want. You can either have it on your phone or you can drop it into your iCloud files app, and that way you just have it access to it, and then just Google garage Band ringtone tutorial and just fallow all the steps. I tried it
this morning. It's a little complicated. You have to basically make a little like piano sound or something or any other instrument sound, then import the ring the music, and then trim the music to thirty seconds or less, and then exit out and then share your creation as a ring tone. Once you do it, it's not tough. It's just a lot of steps.
Well, so I also just went to sounds on like settings through on the iPhone. And if you go to ring tone, there's a tone.
Store there is they still have it.
So they still have it, and you can buy ring tones and they're a dollar twenty nine.
Yeah, but nobody wants to spend that on a ringtone. So I think that there was a time when people were excited about that. Now I feel like people like I would like a custom ring tone if I can make it for free. But I am surprised that they still sell it.
Yeah, me too.
So here's my other option. There's an app if you want to make it drop dead simple. There's an app called I ring ire I and GG by a company named soft soft soft a Reno. There's a soft Reno and that is probably the easiest way. They do have a free download, so I believe you can try it out, maybe make one, see what you think. But this is this is the easiest way. You can imagine it's drag
and drop any song onto this thing. It'll create the ring tone, put it on your phone, or you can even search for a song that you want and just import it that way. I mean, it's really it's easy. And let's see how much it is to actually buy it. It is? Are you ready? Yeah? Twenty bucks? Oh so you can get twenty if you imagine what's twenty divided by one one dollar thirty cents. How much do you say it was? Yeah, one one thirty, So you can if you make fifteen ring tones, you've paid for itself.
Well, there you go. Did you ever use LimeWire no.
I never you know, I'm a big like not anti pirrator, but I just mean being in the creative business, being in the creative space. I never wanted to steal other people's content, and I'm not judging people who did. I think that was it made the way the things we have now are all based on that. Like we might not have Netflix if we didn't have LimeWire or exactly yeah, you know, or Napster before LimeWire. But it's one of these things where I personally just never did it. Of
course I experimented and saw what was available. Yeah, but there's two things I always hated. Number One, I couldn't guarantee the quality you download a song. You have no idea if it was like some ripped CD, someone did it at a lower bitrate or whatever it was. It didn't sound good. With movies, I'm not watching a movie with someone in the theater in front of me their
head popping into it, or just all these things. So and to me, it's just it's easier to buy it or rent it and to just do it the legit way. And so that's why anyway.
No, I mean, I just remember lime Wire was like a thing when I was in middle school.
Oh yeah, it was a big thing. I'll never forget. My friend in college, Adam, showed me this tiny clipping of a newspaper article. And this was before any peer to peer file sharing had started. Now, I believe Napster was around, but this was peer to peer. Like Napster was just for music, but this kind of opened it up to more peer to peer, which you can share anything, PDFs, books, movies, whatever.
Okay.
And it was a tiny little article. It's like called the Oh gosh, was it the new project or GNU peer to peer? And it was like it just said how it could not be stopped. Oh it was once it's once it's there and computers are on board, it could never be stopped. Wow. And I just like in my little mind back then, it was so like boggle.
You took like a you like remember like, okay, this moment, Yeah, everything's changed.
Yeah, because it's just like it made so much sense that, yeah, these computers, it was decentralized versus something like Netflix. If Netflix shuts down, that's it, it goes away. Yeah. But these other sites online that are peer to peer sharing, you can't shut them down. There's always someone online that's gonna have stuff to share, and it just keeps going.
So it's like the universe.
It's kind of like the kind of like yes, kind of like the universe. Wow, that's gonna do it for this episode of the show. If you want links to anything we talked about, take a look at the show notes. If you have a question for me, Megan, tell them where to go.
Oh.
If you have a question, go to Rich's website, which is rich on Tech dot tv and hit the contact button to send your question.
Another website to go to is rate this podcast dot com slash rich on Tech. You can rate and review the show. It helps other people discover it. If you don't want to do that, or you can't or you don't feel like it, just text a link of the show to your friend and tell them they gotta listen. You gotta find me on Instagram at rich on Tech. Just a reminder. Next week is Valentine's Day. Let's get those reservations, flowers, candy, all the stuff that.
Did you get your flowers already?
I don't do flower well, sometimes you do flowers. If you can't do all that stuff, just get your Amazon Prime Now account set up. Do you have big plans for valance. I'd say no, Okay, you said we're going out to dinner, Megan. How can folks find you online?
I'm on Twitter at producer Meghan if you want to send me a question Perfect.
Thanks for all the feedback on Rich Tomorrow. Thank you for listening. We will talk to you real soon